Edward V Rickenbacker
Edward was born on the 8th of October, 1890, in Columbus, Ohio, and his parents were immigrants from Switzerland. His parents purchased a small home two miles from downtown Columbus when he was three years old and Edd helped with garden work, as well as earned money for paper deliveries, setting bowling pins at a local alley, and selling scrap. While he was a hard worker, he also enjoyed painting watercolors and art was a passion that Edd wanted to make a career. When he and his friends made a pushcart, an early form of soapbox derby cart, he became hooked on speed, either on the ground or in the air. Edd attempted to fly a bicycle with an umbrella off the roof of a friend's barn about the same time the Wright Brothers' first flight. He was very accident prone, having fallen twelve feet into an open rainwater cistern as a toddler, having run into his burning school to get his Winter coat, having his leg run over by a coal car that he was taking a roller coaster ride in, and having been rescued by his brother TWICE from passing coal cars.
Shortly before turning fourteen, Edd's father was attacked and was in a coma for six weeks. His death spurred Edd to drop out of school and went to work full time, working eight different jobs over the next two years. Still admiring machines, he enrolled in a correspondence course in engineering while working at the Oscar Lear Automobile Company. The chief engineer gave him more responsibility and Edd became a riding mechanic for Lee Frayer during the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup race. At the age of sixteen, he moved with Lee to the Columbus Buggy Company and became chief testing engineer. His hard work got him special assignments and by eighteen, he filled the positions of salesman, demonstrator, mechanic, chief engineer, and experimenter. In 1910, Edd was in charge of six men for the Upper Midwest Agency, which covered the sales, distribution, and maintenance of Firestone-Columbus automobile sales.
In order to get attention to his company's car, Edd entered it in a 25 mile race which he failed to finish due to a crash. His need for speed was now spent on dirt track races, winning five out of six in Ohmaha, and went on to be the relief driver for his mentor, Lee Frayer, in the first ever Indianapolis 500, helping him come in eleventh place. Edd quit his sales job and became a national racing figure shortly after placing third in the Fourth of July race in Sioux City. He had tried an old Swiss superstition that his mother had told him of tying the heart of a bat to his middle finger with a red silk thread, which he did when it was still beating. His third place spot brought in $12,500 to the Duesenberg team and helped them complete the season. His last race would be in Los Angeles, which would be where he received his first flight by Glenn Martin, the founder of Glenn L Martin Company, and also where he diagnosed an issue with Major Townsend Dodd's plane that was stranded in a field. When the declaration of war was made, Edd traveled to Washington to propose the idea of having racing drivers become a part of the aviation sector, since they were already “experts in judging speed and in motor knowledge”, but his proposal was ignored. The military said they wanted college educated men for aviation and a week before he was supposed to race in Cincinnati, Edd was asked to chauffeur General John Pershing and one month later, he found himself driving Army officials between Paris and Chaumont.
This was the beginning of his military service and he was a Sergeant First Class. Edd mostly drove for Major Dodd, whom he had met the year prior in a field with a broken plane. He once again impressed the right person with his mechanical and problem solving skills when he fixed the car belonging to Lieutenant Colonel Billy Mitchell, who now wanted Edd for flight training. Edd was asked to be the chief engineer at the flight school by Captain James Miller. Edd said yes but for a chance to learn to fly at the French flight school. By September of 1917, he had five weeks of training and twenty-five hours in the air but that didn't stop him from using all of his free time to continue training, even standing in the back of lectures and flying on his own to practice maneuvers. Edd eventually earned the respect of the college educated aviators and in January of 1918, he got into gunnery school and finished the advanced training by March. At the end of the following month, on the 29th of April, 1918, Edd, now known as Rick, shot down his first enemy plane and added four more within one month. This meant he was now a flying ace and spoiler alert, it would not be his last time. Rick got one more victory two days later before being grounded with a fever and ear infection.
He was released from the hospital in time for the St Mihel offensive and by the 15th of September, Rick had received the Distinguished Service Cross seven times. Yes, seven times. To be fair, he received it again for his actions on the 25th of September, but those actions were enough to have that award upgraded to the Medal of Honor. The citation reads:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy near Billy, France, September 25, 1918. While on a voluntary patrol over the lines Lt. Rickenbacker attacked seven enemy planes (five type Fokker protecting two type Halberstadt photographic planes). Disregarding the odds against him he dived on them and shot down one of the Fokkers out of control. He then attacked one of the Halberstadts and sent it down also.
At this time, Rick was also the commander of the 94th Aero Squadron and within the last six weeks of the War, he brought down his final fifteen victories bringing his total air to air victories to twenty-six. His victories remained the highest for the US until World War 2, when Richard Bong passed him with 40. You can hear more about Richard on episode 264 of this podcast. Once Rick learned of the armistice, he flew his plane over No Man's Land and witnessed the ceasefire as it occurred. He later wrote, “I was the only audience for the greatest show ever presented. On both sides of no man's land, the trenches erupted. Brown-uniformed men poured out of the American trenches, gray-green uniforms out of the German. From my observer's seat overhead, I watched them throw their helmets in the air, discard their guns, wave their hands."
When Edd returned home, he received a hero's welcome with six hundred people, to include his mother and the Secretary of War, and was also honored with a parade in Los Angeles. He signed a book deal, which produced his memoir Fighting the Flying Circus, and was contracted for a speaking tour to also help promote Liberty Bonds. Edd was offered a film feature but he didn't want to cheapen his image and went on to make four transcontinental crossings. In July of 1922, Edd married Adelaide Frost and after their European honeymoon, they adopted two boys and moved to Bronxville, New York. He went on to buy the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on the 1st of November, 1927, and made improvements to the facility until 1941, when he closed it due to World War 2. His one Distinguished Service Cross was upgraded to the Medal of Honor by President Hoover on the 6th of November, 1930, in a ceremony at Bolling Field. Edd kept his fingers in the automotive and air industry and became the general manager of Eastern Air Lines in 1935. He worked with the US government to acquire air mail routes and helped develop new aircraft designs. This was part of his clashing with President Roosevelt, who took away the existing mail contracts that Edd had worked hard to get. He was also very against the President's New Deal Policy, calling it not much better than socialism, and this brought him much criticism and the Roosevelt administration ordered NBC Radio to not allow Edd to say any opinions of the President. Roosevelt instead chose to have inexperienced and undertrained US Army Air Corps pilots fly the mail and several died in crashes soon after.
Speaking of crashes, Edd often flew for business and Eastern Air Lines Flight 21 was the plane he was on when it crashed near Atlanta, Georgia, on the 26th of February, 1941. He barely survived and he did offer encouragement and consolation to those that were injured or dying. He also helped instruct the survivors that could walk to go find help. The press announced his death even though he was alive and even the emergency medical services had left him for dead based on his appearance. He had a fractured skull, a shattered left elbow, a paralyzed left hand, several broken ribs, a crushed hip socket, a twice broken pelvis, a severed nerve in the left hip, a broken left knee, and other head injuries to include his left eye being removed. It took many months in the hospital and at home to recover and he later said that he had spent ten days at the door of death.
When World War 2 broke out, Edd was initially, and shortly, for the American First organization but quickly took a pro-British stance and was one of the few celebrities to help rally other World War 1 veterans to the British cause before the US was attacked at Pearl Harbor. He also offered Eastern Air Lines for use for the military. Munitions and other supplies were flown to the British at the direction of Edd and he also inspected troops and operations. He was authorized to fly to England in order to work with the Royal Air Force and the Army Air Corps on their bombing strategies.
In October of 1942, Edd was on a tour of the Pacific Theater of Operations and was on a B-17D Flying Fortress when it strayed off course and was forced to land in a less traveled area of the Central Pacific Ocean. When I say land, I mean ditch into the ocean, where he stayed for twenty-four days. They ran out of food within three days and thankfully, the plane was never spotted by the nearby Japanese island. Almost everyone on the plane survived on sporadic rain water and other miracle foods that happened to come their way. The press once again reported that he had died and the search mission was to be called off after two weeks. Edd's wife pushed them to search for one more week, which they did. One of the eight crewmen died from dehydration after drinking seawater, knowing it was a bad idea. The other seven eventually split up and took small rafts in different directions, eventually leading to the rescue of everyone.
After World War 2, Edd was still the CEO of Eastern Air Lines but when profits started to decline in the late 1950s, he was forced out of the position and also resigned as the Chairman of the Board. He then spent his final years with his wife traveling the world and while in Switzerland seeking medical treatment for his wife, Edward Vernon Rickenbacker suffered from a stroke, followed by pneumonia, which led to his death on the 23rd of July, 1973 at the age of 82. They returned to the States where a memorial service was held and James Doolittle (also a Medal of Honor recipient and aviator) gave the eulogy. Edd was the last living recipient from the Air Service at the time of his death. He is buried with his wife Adelaide in the Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio: Section 58.
